NEW DELHI: Emerging mobile handset vendors will ship 32.5 million smartphone units, by the end of this year. This shipment would represent 25% of overall shipments, up from 15.2 million units in 2015, gaining momentum rapidly in the burgeoning Indian smartphone market, according to a Cyber-Media Research (CMR) report.

‘Emerging’ brands have been classified as those launched in India after 2013, CMR said. The report said emerging mobile handset vendors contributed 16% towards the overall smartphone shipments in 2015, growth from a mere 3% contribution in 2013. “Emerging brands do not remain confined to giving competition to the incumbents and offering a wide variety of options for prospective buyers to choose from.

But they also focus on offering value for money products, so that buyers could get more and best of specifications at affordable price points,” said Faisal Kawoosa, lead analyst-telecoms at CMR. “These brands have been trend setters — Xiaomi introducing the concept of flash sales, OnePlus going by invitation mode and Oppo boldly focusing on the camera feature and calling its phone as the camera phone,” Kawoosa added. The CMR report said Gionee and Oppo were the two brands in leadership positions in all price segments.

In 2015, within the emerging brands Xiaomi led the market followed by Gionee and Panasonic with 23.6%, 14.7% and 11.3% market shares respectively. Micromax’s Yu was the only existing Indian brand in the leadership ranks with Reliance’s LYF as the latest entry. The report said 21 new smartphone brands were launched in India in 2015, against 74 in 2013. The prominent brands that entered the Indian market in the last two years are Gionee, Oppo , InFocus, LYF, Qiku and Meizu.

By the end of first quarter of 2016, seven new brands were launched by LeEco that helped gain prominence. “While the number of new entrants has declined, the contribution of these emerging brands to the overall pie increased exponentially,” said Krishna Mukherjee analyst-telecoms at CMR “There could be a further decline in the new brand additions in the country and there could be around 15 smartphone brands added this year,” said Mukherjee.